Sometimes it doesn't quite go to plan

Last night I had a hypo.

Nothing overly unusual there really. Whilst thankfully not a daily occurrence, low blood glucose does play a frustratingly regular part of my life. This time it was different.

Since gate-crashing the last day of the Diabetes UK Conference a few weeks ago, I've been trying (with a modicum of success) to get back into some better habits with my diabetes. As with anything, it can be easier to slip out of a routine than stick to it.

So Friday night rolled around and in some vague celebration of us both being at home on the same evening, my wife and I settled on a Chinese takeaway (hurrah!) "It'll be 45 minutes" they said. I figured this was another good opportunity to get back into the habit of pre-bolusing for my meals. Takeaway is a bugger to get right at the best of times but I figured I'd give myself a fighting chance and get out in front of it.

To cut a potentially tedious story short, the food arrived late, I didn't check my levels before I took my insulin and I had an utterly rotten hypo. I've had a few bad ones before. I've sat on the bathroom floor at 2am for an hour chomping on Glucotabs like there was no tomorrow. I've eaten jelly babies and watched my levels go down instead of up. But I've always remembered those experiences - cautionary tales are often the best right?

This one was different. I remember eating a couple of marshmallows that my wife brought me (but I don't remember eating the others she gave me from the bag). I remember accusing her of stealing my glass of water (which I had in my hand) and I remember picking my dinner back up (but don't ever remember putting it down). It was almost like an out of body experience in a way. I knew I was hypo the entire time, I remember going through the motions of fixing it all, but at the same time I feel like I can't remember any of it. The best I can liken it to was like waking up from a dream.

This isn't a sob story by any means. Just another cautionary tale to add to the list. Taking my insulin without checking my blood glucose was, at best, misguided; more likely downright idiotic. Not checking my glucose until the food arrived was equally foolish. Trying to fix a hypo with chicken chow mein is simply an experiment that need never be repeated.

Image boosted from the Wikipedia article in the link below

It's a reminder to me, at least, how fragile the equilibrium with diabetes can be. It's the saddle point we're all subconsciously trying to ride as much as possible.  It doesn't take much to knock us from that point of safety.  As is often the case, my idiocy was my downfall this time.


I'm not blogging as frequently on here.  I maintain it's only worth writing when I've got something to say.  My Diabetes UK blogs still get published roughly once a month and if you're interested, you can find them on their blog site

Patched Up

Training miles completed this week: 10
Total training miles completed: 68.5
Training miles left: 177.5
Training runs left: 28 + taper off period

Hello - thank's for dropping by.

There are 95 days to go until the marathon - it's starting to feel very close now, and I've still not done over 6 miles yet.  But that's about to change quite quickly over the next few weeks.

I'm now heading into the stage of long run/short run, with the next two being a slight exception.  When I originally finalised my plan, I realised I'd ended up with all my distance runs mid week and my shorter runs at the weekend - and running 14 miles on a Tuesday or Wednesday night didn't seem appealing so I swapped at one week.  This coming week is the changeover week.

I've done 10 miles this week (4 and 6) and 10 miles are planned in next week (6.5 and 3.5) and then it's 2 miles a week extra on the distance run until the end of March.

The title of this week's post is a reference to how I'm feeling at the moment.  My foot aches quite a lot of the time now, particularly after the long runs and on Sunday, I felt some pain in one of my toes so I've strapped it up as a precaution.  I think at worst, it's a tiny stress fracture but there's no evidence of that really - I'm just being cautious.  I also felt a bit of a cold coming on this week but I think I've held it at bay for now.

I think that feeling like you're facing a constant battle is probably natural during any kind of training like this.  There's probably a lot to be said for mental fitness as well as physical fitness and I've overlooked that up until now.  I'll be trying to focus a lot more on the positives over the next few weeks.

Saturday's run went pretty well - 4 miles in a few seconds over 44 minutes was pleasing.  The 11 minute mile is nice, but realistically I know that as I start going further and further, that will probably push back out closer to the 12 mile mark overall.  It's not something I'm overly worried about, but it's good to be able to track what you're doing.  Another bonus was that it didn't feel too horrific getting up at 4am to fuel up before running.  As I get in to longer distances, I'll probably be leaving the house at a more sensible time so I can adjust my eating time accordingly.

I did 6 miles tonight in 65 minutes - consistent with my last run at this distance.  It might be a sign of how far I've come that I'm disappointed that I didn't do it faster.  I managed to run the first 3 miles without stopping which felt great - an actual sense of achievement.  I'm not sure if it's the cooler air, my determination to run whilst feeling patched up or the fact that I remembered I'd forgotten my inhaler and so paced myself a lot more but it felt a lot easier tonight than probably any other run I've done.  My foot started feeling heavy towards the end of it and I've not doubt it'll hurt tomorrow, but I'm celebrating while I can!  I may have mentioned that I was using Endomondo to track my runs.  Here's an example of tonight's 6 mile run (though you can see that the GPS is a bit off on the map) - I thought I'd share it with you.


It's been a very strange week from a diabetes perspective.  Since my run last Tuesday, I've really struggled to keep my blood sugar in check, but not in the way I've been used to. I've found that it's been really difficult to maintain a decent level and that I've crashed a few times a day.  Whilst it's obviously good to be having lower blood sugar, too low is as bad as too high and as I've mentioned before, it's walking that tightrope in between the two.

I've been experimenting by lowering my insulin doses with meals but it's a lot of trial and error at the moment.  I've got a consultant appointment at the hospital on Feb 1st so I'll be able to talk through it all in a lot more detail then - I'll just need to muddle through on my own until then.  Runsweet have a lot of good information and advice for people with diabetes but I'm wary of making any drastic adjustments without speaking to a doctor first - I think that's just sensible.

I was talking to someone last night about how frustrating it feels in many respects.  I've made a conscious effort to adjust my diet and get back into a proper diabetic regimen for a good few months now and it almost feels like I've got to start and learn how to do it all over again.  I think I probably just need to understand the science behind it and it'll hopefully be fairly straightforward.

A quick mention on diet and such as that feels like quite a good segue there.  I've started tracking my food through the MyFitnessPal which is giving me a good idea of how many calories I need to lose about 20lbs over 20 weeks.  It also helps track what I'm eating around training days and my carb levels (to aid insulin doses).  It's quite a useful tool.  I'm think I'll print off the reports to take along to the hospital in a couple of weeks.

Final quick update on sponsorship. A few very wonderful people have chipped in this last week and the total (exclusing gift aid) currently stands at £157 which is quite good I think.  You can keep an eye on progress, stay up to date with the latest blog and track the countdown to the main event by visting the fundraising page.  All the money is being split between DiabetesUK and The Sheffield Children's Hospital Charity and you can read about all their work by clicking on one of the links.

A hectic weekend meant I wasn't able to go out and get any pics for my Sheffield photobook, but I'm hoping to rectify that this weekend so I can get a good start on that.

I'll leave it there for this week - appreciate I've gone on a fair bit there so thanks for sticking with it to the end.  I mentioned a few weeks back that the end of this week was critical and it's really positive that I'm just about through it relatively unscathed.

Thanks for your support - the messages I get really mean a lot

Take care

Andy

So this is Christmas...

The eagle-eyed amongst you have probably spotted that I've been naming most of my recent blog posts after 'appropriate' song lyrics so this title should come as little surprise.


This is the penultimate post of 2011 so I'll be firmly on topic for today.  Next week's will be a bit of a mix of training progress and a 2011 review/2012 preview.


I'm a bit sketchy on my dates this week (blame the impending chaos of Christmas) but I think I've run twice since I last updated this - 6 miles in total.  I had a mostly very pleasant 2.5 mile jog round Centre Parcs (Sherwood Forest) on Saturday morning.  It would have been completely pleasant had I not accidentally run through a bush at the side of the road and cut my face.  Whilst this is apparently amusing, I didn't see the funny side at the time.


Tonight I've done 3.5 miles (a new best distance) in 39 minutes which is just inside a 12 minute mile time.  Here's the route:

I managed my most sustained period of running to date as well which was pleasing.  I managed all the way from the start marker (above) to practically the Crown & Cushion pub.  It's not that far (just over a mile) but it represents a lot to me which is good.  Being able to take that impact without needing a break is good and hopefully over the next few weeks I'll be able to improve on that.


I've got 3 runs left before January and I'm hoping I can get a decent 4 mile run in before New Year.  My fundraising page tells me I've got 123 days to go before the marathon.  I truly believe that if I keep chipping away at it, I'll get there no problem!


Being diabetic this week has been....challenging.  As you probably know we had a long weekend at Centre Parcs this weekend.  That basically involved eating out for 3 meals a day for the better part of 4 days.  It also meant more indulgences that a) I'm used to and b) should have.  I roughly managed my blood sugar OK.  By that I mean I probably did as best I could given how difficult it was to find time to test my blood and make an educated guess about what I was eating.  I managed a horrifying 20mmol on the Saturday morning, and swung the other way to 2.7mmol on Sunday night.


As I've probably mentioned a few times, it can be quite frustrating when you're not exercising the amount of control you should be and that was certainly true this weekend.  I also 'confirmed' something that I've suspected for a little while, which is that a bad diet, even for a short time, leads to migraines.  I was in tears with pain on Sunday night which is probably the worst I've been for a long time.  I also know that once it's started, it's a good 3 or 4 days before it subsides properly.  It's just even more of an incentive to eat properly I guess.  Apologies for that segue...


I shall sign off there for this week.  To summarise, running - good, diabetes - OK, diet - causes migraines.


Thanks ever so much for all your support and kind words since I started this blog, you're all incredible and I truly thank you for all your encouragement.  Hopefully I'll do you all proud next year.  Remember you can donate (or invite others to) at the fundraising link above.   I know the charities don't affect a lot of you personally and I wouldn't dream of asking you to support something you didn't want to.  But if you know anyone who might like to then please feel free to share the link to the blog.


I hope you all have a fantastic Christmas and a good break from work if you're taking one.


Merry Christmas


Andy

Inhaler

Hi - thanks for stopping by to read.


I'll start off with an apology - I feel like the last couple of (on topic) posts have had little variation of substance and it's unfair of me to expect you to keep reading if I'm not going to try to keep to a standard.  I'll be making a more concerted effort going forward.


This week has been a 3-run week and I've managed 7.5 miles since last Wednesday.  I was feeling somewhat under the weather last week so I did a smaller, 1.5 mile route just to keep some momentum.  Fortunately my man-flu had mostly subsided by Saturday morning and so I went for my longest distance to date and did 3 miles - something I repeated this evening.

Saturday morning was OK as things go.  I'd forgotten my inhaler before I left (I have mild asthma on top of everything else) and it was incredibly icy.  I managed the route in 40 minutes which felt OK considering the circumstances.  I wanted another crack at it without the ice slowing me down and did the same route in 37 minutes tonight - roughly on track for 12 minute miles.


The problem is that I feel like I'm my own worst enemy sometimes.  I got about a mile into my run tonight before I started with stitch again.  I'd been round Leeds Christmas market after work tonight and naively thought that a German sausage then wouldn't hurt before I came home to go running.  What I neglected to tell myself is that it was still only a couple of hours before and that being in a different city doesn't actually make a difference.   I need to be a lot stricter and more disciplined with myself because silly things like that don't help.


The good news is that I'm starting to believe that I can actually make it round 26 miles if I continue to be sensible.  I'm not usually low on self belief, but I'm wary of jinxing myself a bit with this.  When I'm out running, I feel like I can actually do it and that sort of belief is pushing me on.


I'm taking a lot of care when I run and I'm getting better at measuring my stride so I'm not coming down off a curb onto my bad foot and I'm not pushing off with it going back up a curb either.  I'm also starting to feel like I can open up my stride a bit and push myself a bit more.


I've had a bit of a roller-coaster week diabetes wise.  I had a work Christmas do on Friday and I had a decent reading before bed (6 ish if I remember correctly) but it was 20.5 when I woke up Saturday morning!  In trying to correct that I ended up going low three times that day and I've felt like I've hit peaks and troughs since then rather than any real stability.   I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was sort of anticipating this with Christmas coming up.  I just need to work extra hard to keep it in check over the next few weeks now.  If I was consistently getting high readings I'd be concerned but it's just a product of the time of year I think.  Hopefully I can keep it relatively under control.


I've also finalised my fund raising page on Virgin Money Giving today - you can see it here: AndyRunsTheMarathon2012  I also gave myself the first donation to kick start it.  I've talked about the charities a fair bit over the last week or two so please feel free to skip back a few posts and read up about the work they do.  I wanted to just briefly talk about my fundraising goal before I sign off.


My aim is to raise what I'd like to think is a relatively modest amount of money for each charity - namely £500 each.  It's not a lot in the scheme of things as far as the charities themselves are concerned (for examples, it's only about 12% of the funds The Children's Hospital need just to run their diabetes camp for kids for one summer - let alone the rest of their projects) but it's a target I think I can achieve.


I worked out that if every one of my Twitter followers gave £2 (less than the price of a pint as I understand it) then I'd reach my goal with money to spare.  I'm not for a single second suggesting that I'd expect or even ask that they would, but it's just an illustration of why I think it's achievable.  I've put £50 in myself to start and hopefully that'll grow and grow over the coming months.  I'm committing that my company will make up any shortfall to the £1000 total but I'll also put in £500 extra if I can raise more than £1000 in total.  I know Christmas isn't the best time to discuss these things, especially given the current financial climate, but I wanted to just talk about my goals for fundraising and given you my honest viewpoint on what I'm trying to do.


This has been a bit of a longer post than I'd anticipated so I'll leave it there.  I need to rest my foot a bit as the aches, whilst not crippling, are worse after a run and I could do with my feet up for half an hour before bed.


Thanks again for reading (if you made it this far) and don't forget you can always find me for a chat on Twitter (@BroomOwl) or drop me an e-mail (broomowl@gmail.com).


Take care and I'll update you in my last blog before Christmas next week


Andy

There Goes The Fear

Good morning.

Thanks for stopping by to read.  Hopefully I didn't alienate too many of your with yesterday's off topic musical segue.  I'm firmly back on message today.

This week has been a big week for the training.  It's the first time I've done 3 runs in 7 days which is a major step forward for me (pardon the pun).  And it's removed a little bit of the fear that I had that I was setting myself up for an impossible task.

I did Wednesday, Friday and last night (Tuesday), running 2, 1.5 and 2.5 miles.  Still no great distance but something I feel very proud of given how I felt a year ago.  I'll admit that after the Friday run I was a bit on edge.  I had a fair amount of pain in my foot and needed to properly rest up and do some exercises the physio had given me to try and loosen it up.  Fortunately there were no after effects on Saturday and I even managed a 2 mile walk to meet a friend for a drink before football on Saturday.

It was good to get a new longer distance under my belt last night too (despite the initial cold - I need to find my running gloves!!).  I was tempted to go for 3 miles but it felt like too much too soon.  An extra half mile a week feels like the right thing to do at the moment.  I've got enough time to build up to longer runs but for now I need to maintain gradual progress and not force myself into an unnecessary set back.   I do need to keep an eye on the 'official' training plan though.  I don't want to fall behind, but equally may have to adapt it to suit my circumstances.

2.5 mile route

I was talking to my Dad (my original marathon inspriation) about this and we both agreed that getting round will be an achievement in itself and that's all I need to aim for.  That takes the pressure off in a way and I think that helps a lot too.

My new training strategy is hopefully going to focus on 5 runs in two weeks (Tue-Fri-Wed-Fri-Tue) which I think will give me enough to build up over the next few months.

Things are ticking over with regards my diabetes.  I succumbed to some Ben & Jerry's ice cream at the weekend but I'd decided that after 4 days of continuous headache I needed some sugar (note - this is not medically sound advice I'm giving myself) and as such I was skirting around a slightly higher blood sugar level than I would have normally been at.

I think this is another area where I have to be realistic.  I'd love to have the confidence to tell myself I neither need, nor want anything sweet but I know the fact is that's simply not true.  I've definitely cut down significantly from the bad diet I used to have when I started this blog but which is another victory for willpower.  But I know that I'm going to give in to temptation from time to time and the key to diabetes (as with any condition) is to be able to manage it accordingly.

Christmas is becoming an ever closer reality and I'm already starting to plan out all the things I need to cook.  I'm hoping my Christmas lunch will be fairly diabetic friendly and I'm desperately rooting through recipe books for reduced sugar desserts.  And through normal cookbooks for a chocolate yule log recipe for my wife.  I think Christmas has always been a time for dietary indulgence where I'm concerned and I plan to celebrate with reasonable moderation this year.  Although if the customary Chocolate Orange from my mother-in-law makes an appearance I may have to be extra restrained.


The difficult thing I've found is managing my blood sugar after running.  Normally I'll eat dinner at about 5:30pm (when my daughter eats) but when I'm running, it won't be until 8 ish.  As I often go to bed at around 10, I'm in a tricky situation.  My insulin acts over 5 hours but peaks after about 2, so a blood sugar reading just before bed can be unduly alarming.  Take last night - it was 13mmol before I went to bed but I took a chance and didn't correct it as my insulin still had time to act.  My blood was 6.6mmol this morning so I did the right thing in the end.  Getting used to things like that still feels quite new for me.

Once again, thanks for reading.  I do appreciate your feedback and the time you take to have a read.  Apologies for the length of this post (and for getting into the science a bit too much - I'm sure it's just jargon to a lot of you so I appreciate you sticking with it).


I hope you've all got your advent calendars ready for tomorrow.  If you fancy a chat, the usual channels of communication are open - @BroomOwl on Twitter or broomowl@gmail.com


Take care and I'll post again soon


Andy

Stepping up

Hello.

So it's November already - this means I have 171 days to go until Marathon Day - it still feels ages away but I know it's going to come round quickly.

As the title of this post suggests, I'm making an effort to step up my training slightly this week.  I'm targeting 2 runs this week, both with longer distances, though nothing too outrageous just yet.

I did just over 1.5 miles on Monday night - a cunning ploy to try avoid answering the door to Trick or Treaters.  I felt really good after it - no real pain at all which makes me cautiously optimisitc (although I'm been here before so I'm still erring on the side of caution).  And I only managed to get heckled by two lots of kids dressed up as who knows what.

My plan for this week is to go out again tomorrow night (Thursday) which will mean 2 runs in 4 days.  Under normal circumstances I'd have left it an extra day or so but family commitments mean I can't.  That will put the total number of training miles at a huge 5.  It feels somewhat pathetic saying that but there's still a long way to go yet, and the groundwork I put in now will pay off later.

I also created my fundraising page for next year.  Normally I wouldn't like to put a jinx on it, but there was a prize draw to win accomodation in London for the marathon and some running gear if you set on up before November.  If you want to take a look it's here - somewhat imaginatively titled Andy Runs The Marathon 2012 Perhaps I should leave the PR to some of you eh?

I'm running for two charities - Diabetes UK and The Children's Hosptial Charity in Sheffield.  Choosing a charity is difficult but it's a lot easier to pick something close to your heart (as diabetes obviously is).  The Children's Hospital Charity allow you to specify where your money will go to and I'll be donating it towards diabetes work for children.  I can't really begin to imagine how a child copes with this and so I feel like I'm doing a little bit to help with this.  You can read more about each of them by following these links: Diabetes UK and The Children's Hospital Charity

Please don't take that as a subtle hint for donations. I think it's far too early for that and I'd hate to disappoint all of you as well as myself if the worst should happen.  Besides, I'll be far more explicit when I want your money...

Diabetes-wise, things have been going well.  As half of my weekend was spent out in various shops (Meadowhall and IKEA) I ended up eating out twice which was nice but obviously at odds with my diet and a bit of a struggle when it came to insulin.  I overcalculated a touch on Saturday so had a low blood sugar episode but did better on Sunday which was good.  I think I've only had one high reading since my last post (12.4mmol) but I can pinpoint that being due to indulging in a test slice of freshly made parkin.

I thought I'd just talk briefly about what low blood sugar means for me.  When I get low blood sugar (or hypoglycemia) I always get warning signs which is good news.  Without those I could have dangerously low sugar levels and possibly collapse - not an ideal solution for anyone.  My hands start to shake a bit and it gets difficult to concentrate on what I'm thinking or saying - it's a bit like your brain turning to cotton wool.  I occasionally get a feeling a bit similar to an adrenaline rush and I'm very conscious of my heart beating which is quite odd.  More recently I've noticed that my nose gets cold.  All in all, it's not very attractive to witness.  Plus I get quite short tempered which doesn't help.  During the day this I can cope OK but when your body wakes you up at 2am and your shaking, correcting that hypo is a lot more challenging.  I'm not sure if this is the same for everyone - I assume it differs a little bit from person to person.

I've probably taken up quite a lot of your time so I'll end it there.  As always, I'm on Twitter (@BroomOwl) for a general natter or you can contact me on broomowl@gmail.com.  If you're interested in learning more about my charities, they're also on Twitter (@DiabetesUK and @tchcharity).

Thanks for reading - I appreciate you giving up your time

Take care

Andy